The Traveler

by John Katzenbach

  The

  Traveler

  Also by John Katzenbach

  fiction

  In the Heat of the Summer

  nonfiction

  First Born: The Death of Arnold Zeleznik:

  Murder, Madness and What Came After

  The Traveler

  John Katzenbach

  The Mysterious Press

  New York

  Copyright © 1987 John Katzenbach

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  Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011

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  This edition first published in 1987 by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York

  Printed in the United States of America

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  ISBN: 978-0-8021-2263-6

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-8021-9243-1

  The Mysterious Press

  an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  154 West 14th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  www.groveatlantic.com

  For Maddy

  “Well, I never heard of the dev—of your claiming American citizenship,” said Dan’l Webster with surprise.

  “And who with better right?” said the stranger with one of his terrible smiles. “When the first wrong was done to the first Indian, I was there. When the first slaver put out for the Congo, I stood on her deck. Am I not in your books and stories and beliefs, from the first settlements on? Am I not spoken of still in every church in New England? ’Tis true the North claims me for a Southerner, and the South for a Northerner, but I am neither. I am merely an honest American like yourself—and of the best descent—for, to tell the truth, Mr. Webster, though I don’t like to boast of it, my name is older in this country than yours . . .”

  —Stephen Vincent Benét

  The Devil and Daniel Webster

  PREFACE

  Some months after The Traveler was first published in 1987, I was at dinner in Coral Gables, Florida, with a friend, a fellow author and the inventor of one of the world’s most iconic literary killers, and he turned to me as we toyed with chocolate mousse and quietly said, “John, I like to think that we are in the vanguard of the great serial killer novelists.”

  I had previously been unaware that such a category existed.

  Great Serial Killer Novelists

  Now, while it is generally a fine thing to be in the “vanguard” of just about anything—the word has an undeniably catchy forward-thinking and progressive-positive ring to it—this particular subsection of the writing world is problematic because of the window it opens into the imaginations of both writers and killers. We share unfortunate traits: We can be impulsive and often cold-hearted. We can act with sudden savagery or black-souled design. We don’t consider all this carnage with dismay. After all, who has more blood on their hands—or, to be more accurate, dripping from the fingertips we use to strike a keyboard—than writers with deep affection for the dark side of human nature?

  In the course of my career, I have outdone most contract killers, mob enforcers, and assorted other psychopaths. I rival Marine Corps snipers and angry drug kingpins. I have killed young people, old people, good guys and bad guys, innocents and the guilt-ridden. I have been psychotic and sociopathic. I have used various caliber guns, rifles, knives, automobiles, drugs, and even some unique poison concoctions to do away with a wide selection of folks, and I haven’t looked back with much guilt at many of the bodies I’ve left in my wake.

  Many—but not all.

  I am often saddened to see some good guys and some bad guys depart—because, over the course of pages that grow into chapters, I’ve come to love them deeply, feel as if they had become great and close friends and a strange sort of nuclear family. I appreciate their wits, foibles, and unique ways of looking at the world around them. I understand the big risks they take and the stupid mistakes they make. I forgive them their weaknesses and cheer their strengths. They might be heroic, or unlucky, inherently good or cosmically evil—but they are exceptionally close to my heart. As they get nearer to the demise I’ve designed for them, I sometimes feel as if I’m writing at the side of a deathbed. In the solitude of my office I can hear them arguing with me:

  “Do I really have to go now?”

  “Yes, you do. I’m sorry. I’ve really enjoyed having you around.”

  “Are you absolutely sure this is necessary? There’s no alternative ending where I can live on?”

  “No, alas. Good-bye, my friend.”

  “Damn, damn, damn. Okay. You’re in charge. If that’s how you think it has to be . . .”

  Yes. That’s how it has to be.

  Some of the people I’ve done in undeniably take a slice of me with them. They may be killers. They may be cruel. But I can see little parts of my own imagination in their blood, even as it spills onto the page. I know I will genuinely miss the company they provide. That said, there are more than a few literary homicides I perform with nary an emotional twitch on my part—other than the happy recognition that they are giving up their fictional lives on my behalf, and to help me create the atmosphere of tension on the pages that I believe is necessary not just for a “psychological thriller” but crucial for any successful novel. And, in some sort of misguided journalistic responsibility for full disclosure, let me point out that I have also on a couple of occasions killed some household pets to increase this tension. Killing cats does not trouble me—a deep-seated flaw I’m forced to concede—but doing in a dog, especially a loyal, tail-wagging, slobbering, and overwhelmingly friendly beast, causes me to have some sleepless nights.

  Here’s the odd thing: The Traveler was my second novel. When one sits down to write his second, there are some nervous perceptions that become instantly clear, not the least of which is that a first novel is usually a personal story, stolen from a place near the heart and filled with recognizable history from one’s own past. The next time out is significantly different. The stakes are considerably higher, because now one is trying to discover whether one is really capable of being a storyteller. Plots, twists, the psychological underpinnings of the characters—all are substantially harder in that second effort, because the richness of the tale ought to be far more sophisticated. The second novel is about invention.

  When I wrote the opening line—She dreamt uneasily—I did not think I was writing a novel about a serial killer, nor did I expect to be in the vanguard of anything. What I thought was that I was sitting down to construct a story about damage. Not the sort of twisted metal and charred debris one sees after a particularly horrific car wreck pushed to the side of an eight-lane highway so that others can gawk and stare as they resume their trip, but the psychological equivalent of the same. The novel I imagined was based extraor
dinarily loosely on the misadventures of a real killer, and the lucky happenstance when I read that he had a brother who loved him. Those were the only “real” details I needed.

  The fictional territory I wanted to travel in the book was defined less by gunfire and blood than it was by emotions, even if gunfire and blood were a constant backdrop. I became inordinately fond of my character Douglas Jeffers—the traveler of the title. Every small action he performs, regardless of the depravity encapsulated within it, echoed some darkness that I believed familiar. The optimist would say, Well, that’s the inevitable result of staying up past midnight as a young man, reading Dostoevsky and Dickens, devouring John Fowles and John le Carré and all those others ... But the nighttime voice that most novelists know all too well might also ask, Why were you so intrigued by the sides of human nature that make us uncomfortable? Why did you want to explore those circles of Hell?

  To this day, I’m unsure.

  And my uncertainty was buttressed by an unfortunate reality: On more than one occasion, a copy of The Traveler was uncovered by police authorities in the possession of actual serial killers, dog-eared and underlined.

  This is a nasty detail that makes me pause. It seems to me that we blissfully live in a world that wanders from astonishment to surprise, as each new savagery is delivered to our reality. Terrible things exist for us around the corner, down the next block, across town, in a different part of the state, somewhere else in America, or around the world. Tsk-tsk. Did you see that story? My goodness.

  I don’t like the idea that I might inadvertently contribute to someone’s heartbreak anywhere.

  But then, nor do I fear this.

  No writer can.

  We live in unsettled places, for better or for worse. Live happily, I might add. So does The Traveler.

  Picking it up again, reintroducing myself to old friends on its pages, I was struck with a thought: Much has changed since 1987—the world is a different place. Much has not—human nature remains the same. I wondered: Were I to call a friend today in the FBI or a large metropolitan police force and present them with the scenario I invented two and a half decades ago, would they now respond, “Well, with all the advances made in modern forensics—with sophisticated DNA testing and ubiquitous security cameras and new-fangled ballistics studies—we’d catch your guy Douglas Jeffers pretty fast.”

  But then I realized that the killers I’ve known both in real life and in fiction—like Douglas Jeffers—would quietly and confidently reply:

  No, you wouldn’t.

  I

  THE REASONS BEHIND DETECTIVE BARREN’S OBSESSION

  1. She dreamt uneasily.

  She could see a boat adrift, first in the distance, then suddenly closer until she realized that she was on the boat and surrounded by water. Her first thought was panic, to search about her and find someone to tell the important news that she was unable to swim. But each time she turned to look, her perch on the edge of the boat grew more precarious, and the wave action would sweep the small craft upward, balancing momentarily on wave edge, then falling away, sickeningly, bouncing her about, out of control. In her dream she looked for something solid to hold on to. As she seized the mast of the boat and clutched it with all the strength she could muster, an alarm went off, ringing, horrible, and she knew that it was the sound made when the boat sprung a leak and that she was moments from finding seawater lapping at her feet, tickling her with terror. The alarm continued to blare and she opened her mouth wide, ready to call or shout in fear for help, struggling as the boat rocked around her. In the dream the deck pitched abruptly and she cried out, as if to her sleeping self, Wake up! Wake up! Save yourself!

  And she did.

  She gasped wildly, spinning from sleep-state to wakefulness, sitting up suddenly in her bed, her right arm shooting out and seizing the bedstand, something solid amidst the vaporous fears of the dream. She realized then the telephone was ringing.

  She cursed to herself, rubbed her eyes, and found the telephone on the floor by the bed. She cleared her throat as she answered:

  “Detective Barren here. What is it?”

  She had not had time to assess the situation. She lived alone, without husband, without children, her own parents long since passed away, and so the idea that her telephone would ring in the midst of the night did not hold any particular terror for her, as it would have for so many people who are unaccustomed to late-night calls and who instantly would have foreseen the telephone ringing in the darkness for precisely what it was: terrible news. And, being a detective by trade, it was not unusual for her to be summoned at night, police work by necessity often taking place beyond banking hours. That was what she fully expected, that for some procedural reason her capabilities as a crime-scene technician were needed.

  “Merce? Are you awake?”

  “Yes. I’m fine. Who is it?”

  “Merce, it’s Robert Wills in homicide, I . . .” He let his voice trail off. Detective Barren waited.

  “How can I help you?” she asked.

  “Merce, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this . . .”

  She had a sudden mind’s eye picture of Bob Wills sitting at his desk at the homicide office. It was a hard, harsh, open office, illuminated with unforgiving fluorescent light that was always on, filled with metal file cabinets and desks that were colored orange and to her mind seemed stained with all the horrors that had passed so casually in confession and conversation over the desktops.

  “What?”

  For an instant she felt a rush of excitement, a kind of delicious fear, far different from the dream-panic in which she had been immersed. Then, as her caller paused, an emptiness formed in her stomach, a kind of vacuum sensation, that was instantly replaced by a rush of anxiety. “What is it?” she asked, aware that there was a touch of this new sense in her voice.

  “Merce, you have a niece . . .”

  “Yes, dammit. Her name is Susan Lewis. She’s a student at the university. What is it? Has she been in an accident?”

  But then the realization struck her: Bob Wills in homicide. Homicide. Homicide. And she knew then what the nature of the call was.

  “I’m sorry,” he was saying, but his voice seemed very distant and for an instant she wished she were back in her dream.

  Detective Mercedes Barren dressed swiftly and headed across Miami’s licorice late summer night toward the address she’d written in a hand she thought was possessed with someone else’s emotions; she’d felt her own heart racing, but seen her hand steady, scratching numbers and words on a pad. It had seemed to her that it was someone else who had finished the conversation with the homicide detective. She had heard her own voice hard and flat requesting available information, current status, names of officers in charge, facts about the crime already known, options being pursued by detectives. Witnesses. Evidence. Statements. She persisted, trying not to be put off by Detective Wills’ evasions and excuses, recognizing that he wasn’t in charge, but knew what she wanted to know, and all the time thinking that she was screaming inside, filled to explosion with some beast emotion that wanted to twist her into a single sob-shout of agony.

  She would not allow herself to think of her niece.

  Once, as she steered the car up onto the interstate that cuts through the center of the city, blinded for an instant by the headlights of a semi–tractor trailer truck that had pulled in horrifyingly close, air horn sounding rau­cously, she had fought off the sudden fear of a crash and discovered that she’d replaced the sensation with a picture of herself and her niece some two weeks beforehand. They had been sunning by the pool in the small beachside apartment building where Detective Barren lived and Susan had spotted her service revolver sticking awkwardly out of a beach bag, silly and incongruous amidst towels, suntan lotion, a frisbee, and a paperback novel. Detective Barren thought of the teenager’s response:
she’d called the revolver “gross,” which was, to the detective’s mind, an absolutely apt description.

  “Why do you have to carry it, anyway?”

  “Because technically we’re never off duty. If I were to spot a crime, I would have to react like a policewoman.”

  “But I didn’t think you had to do that anymore, not since . . .”

  “Right. Not since the shooting. No, I’m a pretty tame policewoman now. By the time I get to a crime everything is pretty much over.”

  “Yuck. Dead bodies, right?”

  “Right. Yuck is right, too.”

  They’d laughed.

  “It would be funny,” Susan had said.

  “What would be funny.”

  “To get arrested by a policeperson wearing a bikini.”

  They’d laughed again. Detective Barren had watched her niece rise and dive into the opaque blue pool water. She’d watched as Susan had effortlessly swum submerged to the far end, then, without rising for air, pivoted and snaked back to the edge. For one instant Detective Barren had felt a twinge of lost youth jealousy, then let it pass, thinking, Well, you’re not in such bad shape yourself.

  The younger woman hung on the edge and asked her aunt: “Merce, why is it that you live next to the ocean and can’t swim a lick?”

  “Part of my mystery,” she replied.

  “Seems silly to me,” Susan had said, slipping from the pool, the water glistening, flooding from her thin body. She continued: “Did I tell you I’ve decided to major this fall in oceanographic studies? Slimy fish for sure.” She’d laughed. “Spiny crustaceans. Massive mammals. Jacques Cousteau, move over.”

  “That’s excellent,” said the detective. “You’ve always loved the water.”

  “Right.” She sang, “Oh for a life of the sun, the sand, the deep blue sea and fish guts for me.”